The CORE

What is the CORE?

The CORE reclaims a Christian worldview of the liberal arts and connects ACU’s mission, vision and core commitments and values to learning. The CORE is designed to strategically equip students to transform culture with truth by studying the human experience and the development of ideas throughout human history – and to think critically and biblically along the way. The humanities series of the CORE highlights four consecutive courses organized by time periods, spanning the history of human experience. Throughout each of these time periods, students will consider how different ages answer four CORE questions — What is truth? What is beauty? What is justice? What is goodness? The CORE begins the first semester of the student’s freshman year and continues each semester, culminating in a senior capstone. The humanities sequence marks the student’s CORE experience sophomore and junior years. The CORE uses the best practices of cohort learning, interdisciplinary team-teaching, course clustering, instructor-facilitated group discussions, and service-learning. At the conclusion of the CORE, students participate in a capstone experience in which they synthesize all they have learned about the evolution of human ideas and philosophies, significant historical events and scientific discoveries, differing artistic reactions to the events and ideas of each period of human history, including literature, visual art, and music – and filter these lessons through a biblical worldview lens and the truth of Scripture. By studying the arts, philosophy, ethics, science, government, church, and the family, CORE students graduate ready to take their faith and training into the culture and their chosen field.

What makes the CORE unique?

» The CORE strategically and specifically prepares ACU students to “Transform Culture with Truth.”

» The CORE integrates a biblical worldview understanding throughout the four-year curriculum.

» Students are prepared well, distinguished by their faith, integrity, sense of purpose, and work ethic.

» Students learn biblical theories of culture (local, global, and contemporary) so that they understand their place in culture, including how to take their faith to the culture around them and how to transform culture with God’s truth.

» The CORE teaches and affirms values embodied in biblically based conservative evangelicalism and the Western Tradition.

» Students are assigned to learning community cohorts organized by major and academic year, which facilitates the best practice of shared learning experiences.

» Small-group intensives characterize all four years of an ACU student’s CORE experience.

» The CORE implements research-derived best practices for the Liberal Arts.

CORE Questions: What is…TRUTH? BEAUTY? JUSTICE? GOODNESS?

All incoming freshmen read and discuss ACU President Len Munsil’s new book, Transforming Culture with Truth (2015), which makes the case for reclaiming the liberal arts tradition in a Christian context and the need for a biblical understanding of the power of God’s truth in today’s culture.